Semiconductor Industry In Japan
The Japanese semiconductor industry once dominated the world's semiconductor market, with its revenue share reaching 50% in the 1980s. Various explanations have been proposed for this dominance by Japanese semiconductor manufacturers. However, due to a combination of factors, including the shift towards fabless manufacturing in the global semiconductor industry, lack of investment caused by the Lost Decades, country's stagnant economy, high wages, Endaka, an appreciating yen, Four Asian Tigers, rapid industrialisation in the rest of Asia, and an agreement with the US to protect the American semiconductor industry, this had dwindled to approximately 10% by 2019. The areas where the country still remains competitive are semiconductor manufacturing equipment (Tokyo Electron (TEL), SCREEN Holdings, SCREEN, Advantest), wafers (Shin-Etsu Chemical, Shin-Etsu, SUMCO), Flash memory, NAND flash memory (Kioxia, formerly Toshiba Memory), and power semiconductor devices (Renesas Electronics, Rene ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fabless Manufacturing
Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their Semiconductor fabrication, fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a Foundry (electronics), semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclusively, located in the United States, mainland China, and Taiwan. Fabless companies can benefit from lower capital costs while concentrating their research and development resources on the end market. Some fabless companies and pure play foundries (like TSMC) may offer Integrated circuit, integrated-circuit design services to third parties. History Prior to the 1980s, the semiconductor industry was Vertical integration, vertically integrated. Semiconductor companies owned and operated their own silicon-wafer fabrication facilities and developed their own process technology for manufacturing their chips. These companies also carried out the assembly and testing of their own chips. As with ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ministry Of Economy, Trade And Industry
The , METI for short, is a ministry of the Government of Japan. It was created by the 2001 Central Government Reform when the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) merged with agencies from other ministries related to economic activities, such as the Economic Planning Agency. METI has jurisdiction over a broad policy area, containing Japan's industrial/trade policies, energy security, control of arms exports, " Cool Japan", etc. The Ministry has its headquarters in Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo. Its current head is Yoji Muto, who was appointed minister by Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in October 2024. Overview The mission stipulated in Article 3 of the Act for the Establishment of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (Act No. 99 of 1999) is to "enhance the economic vitality of the private sector and develop economic and industrial development centered on the smooth development of foreign economic relations, as well as the stable and efficient devel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fujio Masuoka
is a Japanese engineer, who has worked for Toshiba and Tohoku University, and is currently chief technical officer (CTO) of Unisantis Electronics. He is best known as the inventor of flash memory, including the development of both the NOR flash and NAND flash types in the 1980s. He also invented the first gate-all-around (GAA) MOSFET ( GAAFET) transistor, an early non-planar 3D transistor, in 1988. Biography Masuoka attended Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, where he earned an undergraduate degree in engineering in 1966 and doctorate in 1971. He joined Toshiba in 1971. There, he invented stacked-gate avalanche-injection metal–oxide–semiconductor (SAMOS) memory, a precursor to electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) and flash memory. In 1976, he developed dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) with a double poly-Si structure. In 1977 he moved to Toshiba Semiconductor Business Division, where he developed 1 Mb DRAM. Masuoka was excited mostly by the ide ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Canon Inc
Canon Inc. (; Hepburn: ) is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, specializing in optical, imaging, and industrial products, such as lenses, cameras, medical equipment, scanners, printers, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Canon has a primary listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the TOPIX Core 30 and Nikkei 225 indexes. It used to have a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Name The company was originally named (). In 1934, it produced the ''Kwanon'', a prototype for Japan's first-ever 35mm camera with a focal-plane-based shutter. In 1947, the company name was changed to ''Canon Camera Co., Inc.'', shortened to ''Canon Inc.'' in 1969. The name Canon comes from Buddhist bodhisattva (), previously transliterated as Kuanyin, Kwannon, or Kwanon in English. History 1933–1970 The origins of Canon date back to the founding of Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory in Japan in 1933 by Takeshi Mitarai, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nikon
(, ; ) is a Japanese optics and photographic equipment manufacturer. Nikon's products include cameras, camera lenses, binoculars, microscopes, ophthalmic lenses, measurement instruments, rifle scopes, spotting scopes, and equipment related to Semiconductor device fabrication, semiconductor fabrication, such as Stepper, steppers used in the photolithography steps of such manufacturing. Nikon is the world's second largest manufacturer of such equipment. Since July 2024, Nikon has been headquartered in Nishi-Ōi, Shinagawa, Shinagawa, Tokyo where the plant has been located since 1918. The company is the eighth-largest chip equipment maker as reported in 2017. Also, it has diversified into new areas like 3D printers, 3D printing and regenerative medicine to compensate for the shrinking digital camera market. Among Nikon's many notable product lines are Nikkor imaging lenses (for Nikon F-mount, F-mount cameras, large format photography, photographic enlargers, and other applicatio ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Electron-beam Lithography
Electron-beam lithography (often abbreviated as e-beam lithography or EBL) is the practice of scanning a focused beam of electrons to draw custom shapes on a surface covered with an electron-sensitive film called a resist (exposing). The electron beam changes the solubility of the resist, enabling selective removal of either the exposed or non-exposed regions of the resist by immersing it in a solvent (developing). The purpose, as with photolithography, is to create very small structures in the resist that can subsequently be transferred to the substrate material, often by Etching (microfabrication), etching. The primary advantage of electron-beam lithography is that it can draw custom patterns (direct-write) with sub-10 Nanometre, nm resolution. This form of maskless lithography has high resolution but low throughput, limiting its usage to photomask fabrication, low-volume production of Semiconductor device, semiconductor devices, and research and development. Systems Electr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kanagawa Prefecture
is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the List of Japanese prefectures by population, second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kanagawa Prefecture borders Tokyo to the north, Yamanashi Prefecture to the northwest and Shizuoka Prefecture to the west. Yokohama is the capital and largest city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the List of cities in Japan, second-largest city in Japan, with other major cities including Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Kawasaki, Sagamihara, and Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Fujisawa. Kanagawa Prefecture is located on Japan's eastern Pacific coast on Tokyo Bay and Sagami Bay, separated by the Miura Peninsula, across from Chiba Prefecture on the Bōsō Peninsula. Kanagawa Prefecture is part of the Greater Tokyo Area, the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with Yokohama and many of its cities being ma ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Toshiba
is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors, hard disk drives, printers, batteries, lighting, as well as IT solutions such as quantum cryptography. It was formerly also one of the biggest manufacturers of personal computers, consumer electronics, home appliances, and medical equipment. The Toshiba name is derived from its former name, Tokyo Shibaura Denki K.K. which in turn was a 1939 merger between Shibaura Seisaku-sho (founded in 1875) and Tokyo Denki (founded in 1890). The company name was officially changed to Toshiba Corporation in 1978. A technology company with a long history and sprawling businesses, Toshiba is a household name in Japan and has long been viewed as a symbol of the country's technological prowess post-World War II. As a semiconductor company and the i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nippon Telegraph And Telephone
(NTT) is a Japanese telecommunications holding company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Ranked 55th in ''Fortune'' Global 500, NTT is the fourth largest telecommunications company in the world in terms of revenue, as well as the third largest publicly traded company in Japan after Toyota and Sony, as of June 2022. In 2023, the company was ranked 56th in the Forbes Global 2000. NTT was the world's largest company by market capitalization in the late 1980s, and remained among the world's top 10 largest companies by market capitalization until the burst of the Dot-com bubble in the early 2000s. The company traces its origin to the national telegraph service established in 1868, which came under the purview of the Ministry of Communications in the 1880s. In 1952, the telegraph and telephone services were spun off as the government-owned . Under Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, the company was privatised in 1985 along with the Japanese National Railways and the Japan Tobacco a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mitsubishi Electric
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational electronics and electrical equipment manufacturing company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company was established in 1921 as a spin-off from the electrical machinery manufacturing division of Mitsubishi Shipbuilding (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) at the Kobe Shipyard. A member of the Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi Group, Mitsubishi Electric produces elevators and escalators, high-end home appliances, air conditioning, Factory automation, factory automation systems, train systems, electric motors, pumps, semiconductors, digital signage, and satellites. History Mitsubishi Electric was established as a spin-off from the Mitsubishi Group's other core company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, then Mitsubishi Shipbuilding, as the latter divested a marine electric motor factory in Kobe, Nagasaki Prefecture, Nagasaki. It has since diversified to become the major electronics company. Mitsubishi Electric held the record for the fastest e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hitachi
() is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1910 and headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo. The company is active in various industries, including digital systems, power and renewable energy, railway systems, Health care, healthcare products, and Financial system, financial systems. The company was founded as an electrical machinery manufacturing subsidiary of the Kuhara Mining Plant in Hitachi, Ibaraki by engineer Namihei Odaira in 1910. It began operating as an independent company under its current name in 1920. Hitachi is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is a key component of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX Core30 indices. As of June 2024, it has a market capitalisation of 16.9 trillion yen, making it the fourth largest Japanese company by market value. In terms of global recognition, Hitachi was ranked 38th in the 2012 Fortune Global 500 and 129th in the 2012 Forbes Global 2000. Hitachi is a highly globalised conglomerat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |